MICROPEP II - Design and synthesis of antimicrobial peptides targeted against pathogenic fungi.

Radiation treatment of head and neck cancer must be suspended due to Candida infection in the mouth and throat. This is just an example showing the need for new treatment of fungal infections. The present project addresses these issues by proposing to ide ntify pharmacophores for antimicrobial action towards these infections. The research will follow the lines our group already has utilised for making extremely small antimicrobial peptides, compounds that are now in preclinical evaluation for treatment of infections caused by multiresistant Stapylococcus aureus by a pharmaceutical company. The proposal calls for the development of novel synthetic methods for generation of focussed libraries, utilisation of high throughput screening facilities and creation of quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR) in a full drug design cyclus. The synthetic work and the QSAR will be undertaken in my research group in cooperation with the Micropep I staff and internal collaborators, while the biological testing will be undertaken by a network of highly recognized research partners. The project is also supported by Lytix Biopharma AS.